I am a Cat Woman. My self-appointed mission in life is to save the feline world! To accomplish this mission, I get cats fixed. Perhaps my mission might be slightly delusional. This blog is a mishmash of wishful thinking, rants, experiences as I remember them and of course, cat stories and cat photos. I have a nonprofit now, to help keep the cats here cared for and to fix community cats. Happy Cat Club formed in 2015. Currently, we are on a mission to fix 10,000 cats.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Gretal Again Having Tooth Problems

It has not been that long since Gretal had 10 teeth pulled, thanks to a friend of mine, at her vet, Alpine in Corvallis.

But, for two days now, she has again been working her jaw, just like she did last time. So far, no bloody pus filled drool, but there is drool, coming from the left lower side, near the front, as far as I can tell.

My friend is getting her records from her vet tomorrow so I will know which teeth were pulled. I will seek care for her somewhere. When you pull some teeth, others can move and loosen. It's a problem with humans. It's a problem with cats, particularly, I was told, on the lower jaw. It's also possible other teeth were bad that were not pulled. It can be difficult to tell.

Hopefully I can get her mouth issues taken care of quickly. She is very sensitive to mouth pain. She won't eat with a hurting tooth, whereas old Valentino would scarf food with big wads of pus drooling out his mouth from bad teeth. He'd cry out in pain, but continue to eat.

Miss Daisy will lose weight rapidly with bad teeth. She's been under anesthesia five or six times now, for tooth removal. I would wonder why a vet would not just remove them all, after that many times under anesthesia.

I don't think some vets think about how the jaw works, when teeth here and there are removed, with alignment and chewing, which is as important to a cat as to a human. Sometimes if you remove one tooth, you have to remove others, to keep the jaw and teeth left working and in align and able to close. I don't think they think about how stressful it is on the cat to go back over and over for more teeth to be pulled or how expensive it is for the cats' owner. I think one year alone Miss Daisy had to go in three times for teeth to be pulled. The vets don't use mouth X-rays to determine which teeth are bad.

The first vet Valentino went to for a dental pulled only some insignificant incisors, leaving all the rotten cracked infected teeth that were bad in his mouth. Less than one month later, he had to have seven more pulled, including all four canines, most horribly cracked, decayed and worn. This was easy for even a novice to see. That was outright malpractice in practice. Robbery is another term for it.

But the drift issue of teeth left, into bone vacancies, holes, where other teeth used to be, on the lower jaw, seems to be an issue. One vet told me they have something now they can pack the holes with, to maintain space and that fills the root holes, like bone or something or that promotes bone regrowth. She said it was especially an issue with the canines on the lower jaw, that have to curve under the gum line since there isn't much bone in the lower jaw to hold the roots.